Summary: This is about loving our enemies.

This is yet another hard saying of the Sermon on the Mount. This goes beyond the revenge we looked at last week. Jesus said that we shouldn’t seek revenge. Okay, fine. I’d love to take revenge, but I won’t. Now he says that I have to love them. Isn’t it enough that I don’t punch the other guy in the nose? You say I gotta love him!

1. Reasons to HATE

Our reasons to hate are as numerous as our reasons to take revenge. We can rationalize anything. Notice that Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’” The part about hating your enemy is nowhere in the Bible. The part about loving your neighbor is from Lev. 19:18. We come up with good reasons to hate people.

A. Not my NEIGHBOR

Since it was said that we should love our neighbor, some drew the conclusion, that we should only love our neighbor. The logical conclusion was then to not love someone who wasn’t a neighbor. In the OT mind, the neighbor was a fellow countryman. It meant that a neighbor was someone like us (in thought, appearance [dress, race], belief, etc.).

B. My ENEMY

An enemy is someone who is against us. An enemy is someone who is different from us. It could be our nemesis at work, school, or wherever. Why should we love someone who doesn’t like? What have they every done for us?

C. My PERSECUTOR

A persecutor is the one who picks on us for who we are. This goes beyond an enemy. This is the bully who puts threats into practice. Okay, so I shouldn’t seek to do the same to him, but why can’t I sit and stew about him?

D. They are EVIL

It was also considered noble to hate the enemies of God. Someone who is an evil sinner should be hated. There used to be a minister from Topeka, Kansas that picketed various places and preached, “God hates fags.” His rationale was that since they were “evil” people, God hated them and so should everyone else.

E. They are UNJUST

The unjust are those who seek to do harm to others. The execs at Enron were unjust. My cousin lost all his retirement when Enron went bust. That’s not fair. Shouldn’t I be able to hate them for that gross injustice?

2. Rewards for LOVE

There are rewards for loving others. Jesus said that greatest commandment was to love God, which few have a problem with. The second greatest commandment was to love your neighbor as yourself. Part of the problem is the definition of who our neighbor is. Who is our neighbor? Jesus defined our neighbor in the story of the Good Samaritan. If their was any group that Jews hated in Jesus’ day, it was the Samaritans, along with the tax collectors and Gentiles, which covered about anyone who wasn’t like them. In effect our enemy is our neighbor.

A. To be a CHILD of God

Jesus said that one of the benefits of loving our enemies (who really are our neighbors) is that we will be children of God. Children bear the resemblance of their parents. People say I look like my parents, and my kids look like my wife or me. Sometimes we even see a resemblance between parents and adopted children.